Did you realize that making your site faster is not just great for your sales, it’s also good for the world? Yup – as if there weren’t a million other reasons why having an optimized site is important, you can now take pride in knowing that a fast website: saves energy, reduces economic disparity, increases happiness, and – in the most recent news – can prevent hate.
Fast Websites Save Energy
Every time your website loads, it’s using computing power at the server to generate your page, network power to transfer your page, and device power to render your page on the browser. The quicker your page spends in each of these phases, the less energy it uses.
And we all know less energy usage is a good thing. I don’t want this article to turn into a climate change debate (although I’m sickened by the fact that it’s disputed) – but can’t we all agree that less waste is better?
The less power that’s used, the better for the environment, better for your server costs, and better for you client’s utility bills.
Fast Websites Reduce Economic Disparity
There is an increasing gap between what a high-end device can handle and what a low-end device can handle. And since we all know that people abandon websites as load time increases, that means people using low-end devices are consuming less content.
Think about that for a minute. People using low-end devices (on the poor end of the spectrum) are only accessing super accessible websites, while those on high-end devices can access anything. That means that’s a huge difference between what different economic classes are using on the internet.
Want to bridge that gap? Make your website fast. Then someone using a $150 entry level phone will be reached as much as someone using a brand-spanking-new $1000 phone (I still can’t believe that’s the new norm).
Fast Websites Increase Happiness
Have you ever thrown your phone because it was taking too long to load something?
I haven’t either…but I’ve come close to. Yet it certainly has put me in a sour mood.
The worst part about slow-loading experiences is the stress induced takes a while to go away. I’m likely to be frustrated for a bit after something hasn’t worked the way I expected it to.
Don’t piss people off. Make your site fast – and keep people happy.
Fast Websites Prevent Hate
I have to admit, this last one is a bit of a stretch. But I can’t not bring up Cloudflare’s latest response to the latest mass shootings in America. Earlier this week they made the decision to terminate its relationship with 8Chan, a popular forum that facilitates public opinions. They explain that 8Chan has “repeatedly proven itself to be a cesspool of hate,” which conflicts with its core “pursuit of our goal of helping build a better internet.”
First, hell yeah Cloudflare. Kudos to standing up for what’s right.
Second, the fact that a network provider realizes that its absence of service will negatively impact users of a hateful site is encouraging. Nice websites will be treated with respect; hateful websites will load slower. That’s a world I can live in.
Are you making the world better?
In a world that’s so big, it’s hard to feel like you can make a difference. But you can. Pay attention to your site speed, and take pride knowing you’re making the earth greener, including all economic classes, preventing bad moods, and spreading love.